The Flat Earth satire: using science theater to debunk absurd theories
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Research article
Geosci. Commun., 4, 297–301, 2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-4-297-2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
The Flat Earth satire: using science theater
to debunk absurd theories
George Sand França1,2 , Ricardo Cruccioli Ribeiro3 , Luana Rosa Soares2 , João Calmoni2 , Gabriel B. de França4 , and
Paulo Eduardo Brito5
1 Observatório Sismológico, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, 70910-900, Brazil
2 Faculdade de Artes Dulcina de Moraes, Brasília, 70.392-902, Brazil
3 Faculdade de Educação, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, 70910-900, Brazil
4 Instituto de Química, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, 70910-900, Brazil
5 Faculdade Planaltina, Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, 70910-900, Brazil
Correspondence: George Sand França (georgesand@unb.br)
Received: 15 March 2020 – Discussion started: 15 June 2020
Revised: 20 April 2021 – Accepted: 26 April 2021 – Published: 1 June 2021
Abstract. Science needs everyone and everything; therefore, 1 Introduction
art must be used for its understanding. As the popularity of
social media grows, absurd theories have been gaining con- Social media environments have enjoyed massive growth re-
sensus and, even worse, becoming factual truths without any cently and, with this, absurd theories are being accepted as
criticism for many. Thus, aiming to find solutions for a bet- science and factual truth while spreading considerably in so-
ter understanding of our scientific theories, the project “The ciety. There seems to be no consensus regarding controver-
earth is flat! And, now what?” was created. This project uses sial topics such as creationism or global warming and even
performing art as the main communicator to spread science. regarding the shape of the Earth. In Brazil, although the “Big
The first step consisted of calling a meeting to promote in- Bang Theory” series was shown for general audiences on
tegration among the project participants and professionals TV, the scientific dissemination is mostly limited to children
from different areas of expertise such as geophysicists, art while paying no attention to the adult audience. Academia
educators, artists, astronomers, and clowns. The meeting was sometimes engages in some actions, but without a wide reach
also an occasion for planning the show. The second step con- and with low popularity. The search for a connection between
sisted of developing the dramaturgy along with the creative science and art is certainly complicated, due to the exhaustive
process, which involved discussions on scenes and lessons scientific activity of researchers, who are not able to present
about the theme to be presented, and the third step was the themselves as artists or art-related most of the time. One of
performance. The bibliographical review, the equivalent of the best options to bridge this gap is to invite educational
the “table’s work” for artists, was not based on indexed jour- artists and more colleagues in the sciences to work together.
nals, but rather on social networks and classes for under- To this end, the theatrical play “The earth is flat! And, now
standing the shape of the Earth. The show impacts the au- what?” (in Portuguese: A terra é plana! E agora?) was cre-
dience in a fun way, offering the opportunity for the general ated and first shown at the General Assembly during the Eu-
population to experience science in a new way. ropean Geoscience Union (EGU) 2019 (França et al., 2019a),
followed by five performances in theaters. This play won the
DF 2019 Theater Award Category: Local Circulation Show.
The play uses a clown to explain the whole process of cre-
ation, connecting science and art while applying our research
to improve the understanding of the audience of the topic at
hand. Suspendisse a elit ut leo pharetra cursus sed quis diam.
Nullam dapibus, ante vitae congue egestas, sem ex semper
Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.
298 G. S. França et al.: The Flat Earth satire: using science theater to debunk absurd theories orci, vel sodales sapien nibh sed lectus. Etiam vehicula lectus quis orci ultricies dapibus. In sit amet lorem egestas, pretium sem sed, tempus lorem. 2 Art–science and the process Palma (2006), in his experience with the art and science project on stage, reports that, although theater is a power- ful tool for disseminating scientific principles, implementing this integration is permeated with difficulties. This project won several awards and had great repercussions in the com- munity. The dialog between science and theater is old; how- ever, it is still a localized movement with little material avail- able, especially in Brazil. Among the experiences in Brazil, Almeida et al. (2018) presented their successful and contin- ued project for integrating science and theater at the Museu Figure 1. (a) The first presentation at the EGU 2019, where it all Ciência e Vida (Museum of Science and Life) in Duque de started. (b) Arrival at the EGU 2019 congress in Vienna. (c, d) AGU Caxias-RJ. On the other hand, our work focuses on the Earth fall meeting 2019 in San Francisco. sciences field and art, which are still very little explored. Firstly, several pieces of information on the flat Earth sub- ject were collected from the groups found in the social net- during rehearsals. After that, we held an open rehearsal, in works defending this point of view and news refuting this which local artists and scientists were invited to talk and dis- theory; after that, the scenes were created. In the show, the cuss the show before its premiere. After the play itself was introduction scenes are based on Mamulengo, which is the ready, we had to plan for a practical scenario that was easy to Portuguese name given to the puppetry theater, also known move around, so we chose a folding screen, a pulpit, a ball, as marionettes and/or puppets. Culturally, it is one of the rich- and a transport crate. est popular spectacles of northeastern Brazil, in which a dra- Overall, the play was shown two times at different times matic representation using puppets is played on a small el- of the day during international conferences (França et al., evated stage covered by a curtain to hide the people/actors 2019a, b) and seven times in theaters to an audience of 316 giving life and lending their voices to the characters. De- people considering only the seven theater performances. The pending on the play’s nature, the puppets are handled by presentations took place at the following venues: the FAP-DF hand, stick, metal stick, or string (Gaspar, 2021). This first on 12 October; Casa dos Quatro from 15 to 17 November; scene introduces Dr. Terremoto (Dr. Earthquake), the show’s Oficina Perdiz from 21 to 22 December; and participation protagonist, which is followed by a short lecture showing at at the FICA festival of Casa da Ribeira in the city of Natal- least three slides. In the next scene, a text about the big bang RN on 29 December. The presentation posters and photos are theory was adapted from Oliveira (2019), recorded, and pre- shown in Fig. 2. sented as a choreography. After that, Dr. Terremoto sings a song written by Thomazoni (2013), which was inspired by the opening of the “Big Bang Theory” series. Also, scenes 3 Results from França et al. (2019a) (Fig. 1) featuring Newton and gravity based on the fall of the apple myth presented in the The audience was invited to evaluate the performances by EGU session are shown. This scene is followed by the story filling out a previously handed Google form consisting of of the planets, which are represented with balloons and a Pi- nine questions and an optional comment that was available to lates ball, based on the film “The Great Dictator” by Charlie every audience member. Of the 316 people who watched the Chaplin and, finally, the “Earth is Flat” speech. show, only 11 % answered the questionnaire. This low num- The scenes’ creative process lasted about 6 months while ber of respondents is probably because, in Natal, where we being evaluated weekly during the rehearsals. The costume had the largest audience, the questionnaire was available only worn by the storyteller actor consisted, initially, of a black after the last performance, whose audience consisted of sev- suit with red details and checkered pants, which were later re- eral known people and friends. Nevertheless, the question- placed by brown shorts and coupled with wine-colored socks, naire answers steered us toward several reflections on both a white shirt, and suspenders to complete the costume. The the artistic point of view and scientific dissemination. idea behind the storyteller costume was to pepper it with Figure 3 shows the histogram of the responses and the au- some clown props. The dramaturgy was a compilation of the dience. The questionnaire responses were given by audience scenes described above and was then improved and adapted members who watched the shows as follows: about 40 % at Geosci. Commun., 4, 297–301, 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-4-297-2021
G. S. França et al.: The Flat Earth satire: using science theater to debunk absurd theories 299
Figure 3. Histogram of audience and responses.
The second part of the questionnaire concerned scientific
dissemination and had, among the questions, one that asked
the respondents to associate one word with the play they just
watched. Figure 4 shows a word cloud highlighting the an-
swers of the audience describing the show as didactic, in-
teresting, fun, playful, and genial, thus showing the play’s
general acceptance by the public. The next question asked
the audience to score the play between 1 and 5 (low to high
dissemination) regarding science dissemination; 83 % gave
scores of 4 % and 5 %, and 17 % gave a score of 3, showing
again the importance of this play used at least in the Federal
Capital of Brazil (Fig. 5).
Furthermore, only 40 % became even more curious regard-
Figure 2. The posters of the shows that took place in Casa dos
Quatro (a), Teatro Oficina Perdiz (b) and Casa da Ribeira (c); and
ing the Earth’s shape: this is because the vast majority of the
photos (d, e, f) taken during the play by Hugo de Freitas. audience were aware of the Earth’s shape and certainly did
not believe that a flat Earth surface is feasible (Fig. 6).
The overall score results indicate that 80 % of the audience
assigned scores 4 and 5, thus recommending the play to other
Casa Ribeira in Natal-RN, followed by 37.1 % (three shows) viewers, similarly to the scores assigned to scientific dissem-
and 25.7 % (two shows) at Casa dos Quatro and Teatro Ofic- ination. Therefore, it can be concluded that the play was well
ina Perdiz, respectively, in Brasília. Therefore, the responses received by the public (Fig. 7).
were well distributed among the show audiences, which also The general comments about the play highlight that the
included professionals from academia during the presenta- show is not completely ready yet, especially the end of the
tion held in Natal-RN. The more diverse audience in Natal play; questions the reason for using “mamulengos”; and the
was because the play was presented during a theater festi- issue of the flat Earth and the physics speech. Another com-
val, FICA, which presented the first review of the play by ment about the play regarded the actors’ training and qual-
the collective Farofa critics. This review is available only in ification in the field of sciences. Finally, all comments are
Portuguese on the Farofa Critica website (Costa, 2021). going to be used for updating the play and trying to present
The majority of the public, 82.8 %, had a high degree of the best show.
understanding of the Earth’s shape, and, certainly, the title
makes the public more aware of the subject (Fig. 3a). The
number drops when the question is a little more specific; 4 Discussion and conclusion
however, it is well discussed in high school. Furthermore,
69.6 % of the public knew about the law of universal gravi- Creating a play is a long and arduous process, but when it
tation (Fig. 3b). In the last question on heliocentrism, 20 % was finally presented we realized it is an excellent way of in-
of the respondents did not know what it was (Fig. 3c). The forming and publicizing the subject at hand. The public who,
results directed us to believe that the audience had excellent for the most part, had prior knowledge of the subject took
knowledge of the subject, whose understanding was apparent into account the scientific dissemination nature of the play
given the audience’s laughter during the play. and considered it an excellent show. The show had a good
https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-4-297-2021 Geosci. Commun., 4, 297–301, 2021
300 G. S. França et al.: The Flat Earth satire: using science theater to debunk absurd theories
Figure 5. The word cloud shows the main words linked
with/describing the play.
Figure 6. Plot showing the percentage of people agreeing that the
play promotes science.
Figure 4. Graphics (a) “what do you understand about the shape of
the Earth?”, (b) “what do you know about universal gravitation?”, Figure 7. Plot showing the percentage of people more curious about
and (c) “what is heliocentric?” the shape of the Earth.
reception in the local community, winning the DF 2019 The- together should further guarantee the quality of scientific dis-
ater Award Category: Local Circulation Show. semination. In addition, researchers should embrace scien-
The importance of disseminating sciences using art as a tific dissemination as an important role played by scientists
tool opens a popular space for science while also presenting and participate as collaborators in most dissemination activi-
shows to a new kind of audience that is not frequent in this ties. By participating in these activities, explaining well their
space. The possibilities for exploring this path are endless, role in society while establishing the connection between sci-
but still, few come to fruition. We need to connect art and ence and art can make science and knowledge more popular,
science, aiming to strengthen both education and art, which stimulating and boosting science in all areas.
Geosci. Commun., 4, 297–301, 2021 https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-4-297-2021G. S. França et al.: The Flat Earth satire: using science theater to debunk absurd theories 301
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Special issue statement. This article is part of the special issue
“Five years of Earth sciences and art at the EGU (2015–2019)”. It is
a result of the EGU General Assembly 2019, Vienna, Austria, 7–12
April 2019.
Acknowledgements. We are thankful to Hugo Freitas and
Lyanna Soares for the photos. George Sand França thanks CNPq
for the PQ grants.
Financial support. This study was financed in part by the CAPES
– code 001.
Review statement. This paper was edited by Francesco Mugnai
and reviewed by Juliana Garrido Damaceno, Aleksander Väljamäe,
and one anonymous referee.
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